Friday, February 25, 2011

The Kedeshian State

Before the Scream, Kedesh was a relatively prosperous, well-populated colony, albeit with relatively backward technology and relatively small amounts of Psitech. Ruled by a relatively independent "Mandate colonial administration", it was also home for a Mandate Navy Reserve Fleet and a Mandate Rapid Reaction Marine Division, both more loyal to their local commanders than to the central Mandate command.

The Scream did not hit Kedesh particularly hard in terms of hardware damage; the spaceport and most of the Naval garrison stationed there were relatively primitive and had relatively small amounts of Psitech in them. The real damage, however, was not caused by the Scream itself but by the panic created by its occurrence and by being cut off from the Core, escalating into riots and later into a fully-blown civil war, lasting decades.

When the civil war was over, in 2684, 90% of the former population was dead, as was the pre-Collapse Governor and his highly-popular administration. Instead, a new President took over - the Naval Base's commander Ahron Garnus - using the remaining Marine forces to grab power and finally restore order. While Kedesh, being cut off from other worlds and devastated by the civil war, was by far unable to produce anything resembling the Marines' Pretech combat gear, the Naval Station held a considerable stockpile of high-tech weaponry ranging from small arms to light combat vehicles. In addition, it had a secret stockpile as well - a stockpile of anagathics, enough to keep the Eternal President alive for a practically endless duration.

So things settled down with an Immortal President for Life, using his Death's Head Regiment with its slowly deteriorating Pretech gear to keep any potential threats to his power at bay, and a massive TL3 army keeping the population in line. When Kedesh reached back to the stars in 3141, it began to use the Death's Head Regiment, now equipped with poorly-maintained Pretech relics, as a bullying tool against the governments of neighboring worlds, demanding tribute - or else. None of the collapsed neighbors was determined or organized enough to resist, so Kedesh was able to keep this scheme in operation and even outright conquering Ashera, its governments cowed into submission by the mere sight of the power-armoured, Pretech-equipped Death Head Troopers.

Against a real opponent willing to pay the price in blood to defeat the Death's Head Regiment, however, the mighty Kedeshian army will be revealed as a force trained for terrorizing civilians and conducting pompous parades - not real war - and equipped with aging equipment which is mostly in very bad shape. Luckily for Kedesh, such a confrontation has not happened.